it is an awful game where you end up wasting a crapton of time to build up your resources after finding you've done everything worth doing, only to find it way easier to just leave your computer on over night to get to the goal, only to find that you just wasted all of those hours because in the end it makes no difference to the endgame anyway.

It's a game that starts at indifferent/has potential and ends at oh dear why'd I waste so much time for that. Also, the DLCs are mostly just awful.
If you still feel the need to play it:

Spoiler

play the MQ and any interesting sounding side quests. You'll eventually get to a point where you're mainly just "resource gathering", at which point you might as well quit because you've seen all that's worth seeing and the rest is just grind or exploits to reach a monetary goal and a terrible end sequence.

-- Proud leader of the Shit Games Liberation FrontAll your shit games are belong to us